Tensile alignment

This is more than one-half of the strength of the continuous-fibre material (eqn. 25.3). Or it is if all the fibres are aligned along the loading direction. That, of course, will not be true in a chopped-fibre composite. In a car body, for instance, the fibres are randomly oriented in the plane of the panel. Then only a fraction of them - about - are aligned so that much tensile force is transferred to them, and the contributions of the fibres to the stiffness and strength are correspondingly reduced. 

As shown in Fig. 3.4 stress-strain tests on uniaxially aligned fibre composites show that their behaviour lies somewhere between that of the fibres and that of the matrix. In regard to the strength of the composite, Ocu, the rule of mixtures has to be modified to relate to the matrix stress, o at the fracture strain of the fibres rather than the ultimate tensile strength, o u for the matrix. 

If the fibres are aligned at 15° to the jc-direction, calculate what tensile value of Ox will cause failure according to (i) the Maximum Stress Criterion (ii) the Maximum Strain Criterion and (iii) the Tsai-Hill Criterion. The thickness of the composite is 1 mm. 

The ultimate tensile strength of a uniaxially aligned fiber-reinforced composite is given to reasonable accuracy by the rule of mixtures relation ... 

It is not very difficult to appreciate that if polymer molecules are aligned as in Fig. 18.10 then a much higher tensile strength will be obtained if a test is carried out in the X-X direction as opposed to the Y-Y direction. It is also not difficult to understand why such a material has a lower impact strength than a randomly coiled mass of molecules (Fig. 18.10) because of the ease of cleavage of the material parallel to the X-X direction. 

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